Rafael Benitez believes he has no choice but to “carry on working hard”
despite Liverpool’s disastrous season slipping to a new low on Wednesday
night with their FA Cup elimination at the hands of Reading at Anfield.

The defeat is bound to trigger yet more questions about the Spaniard’s future both in the short- and long-term, with Liverpool now reliant on the Europa League if they are to salvage a campaign which has seen them knocked out of the Champions League and Carling Cup and cut adrift in the Premier League.

Benitez, though, remains philosophical at such a prospect, insisting he has been surrounded by doubts over his continued employment for three months.

“We knew it was a massive competition for us and we wanted to progress,” he said. “So we are really disappointed, for the team and for all of the fans who came to support us.

“It is a really bad result. All we can do now is prepare the next game. For three months people have been talking about me, but as a manager the only thing you can do is be disappointed and then look forward to the next game.

Before that, though, Benitez faces an anxious wait to see if Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard - neither of whom lasted more than 45 minutes on Wednesday night, thanks to knee and hamstring injuries respectively - will be fit to be considered for Saturday’s trip to Stoke. The pair will undergo scans on Thursday.

Yossi Benayoun, who picked up a rib injury, is also rated as a doubt.

Maxi Rodriguez, the Argentine international winger who on Wednesdat signed a three and a half year contract at Anfield to complete his free transfer from Atletico Madrid, is unlikely to feature, though his capture does at least represent a rare fillip for the increasingly beleaguered Liverpool manager.

So dejected was Benitez by defeat that he stopped short of saying his side deserved to win the game, admitting their Championship opponents “worked hard,” though he cryptically alluded to a “number of things” he did not like on the pitch. “It is better I do not say what I did not like,” he said. “It was not just the way they played or the performance of the referee, or our own failings, it was all of these things together.”